What 'Destiny' needs to do

Destiny has nothing but potential. Next gen early MMORPG FPS. Yep, that's got a winning recipe. Borderlands had me playing for quite some time, but I ran out of steam on it after defeating the final boss. Why is that? WoW has me clocked at more than 2 months of game time (don't read 2 months of a few hours a day, read 60 x 24 = my hours of gameplay). So why can I sit and play WoW for so long but not run out of steam? Furthermore, why can I do the same thing on Skyrim?

First, they shouldn't make it all about shooting. I think the part of the equation that kept me out of Borderlands after the first playthrough is that I got tired of it. If I want an escalatingly difficult shooter, I'd rather do something with an easily identifiable score system such as Call of Duty. On Borderlands, there's not much to do besides kill and waste time. On WoW or Skyrim, though, exploration, skill gaining, item creation, and even combined multiplayer interaction was easy. Destiny is going to need to keep the gameplay stellar, but allow for skill creation, sidequests, and fun things to do outside of FPS gameplay that mean something to your character. A major contribitur to WoW is that if I didn't want to go killing, and didn't care to find a certain item, I had trackable achievements, skills, and general loitering that I could do while sitting around chatting with my friends.

Destiny is going to need to bring that to the table if they want to keep the game going for a long time. If it's all about shooting it will lose steam. What I would want to see in this regard is character creation or gathering skills, something that is of value to other players. Certain accomplishments that are replicatable, but only on a small scale. The public event from the Sony's E3 showed one such example, where anyone in the area helped to complete a difficult task. These are awesome and when regularly scheduled, but still rare, they can bring about a major incentive to play when you'd normally not be playing. If they attach an achievement, that's even better.

Second, these achievements and skills will need to keep a global scope in mind. If everyone in the game just needs to reach the highest level to do everything, there won't be much incentive to keep playing. Give us a limited number of skills we can do or rare achievements. Keep in mind that if you have 100,000 players playing the game, if 100 have a certain achievement, that's awesome, but 10,000 have it, we'll lose interest in trying to get it. Furthermore, if the skills allow casual players to easily create rare items, the items will cease to be rare. Rarity is frustrating, but it keeps us playing. The last thing Destiny can afford to do is lose players. MMO's must have a population. If the population drops, it snowballs.

Third, give us customization. Let us make our guardians look amazing. Different colors are cool, but designs should be unlocks, paid for with currency, experience, or special accomplishments. Having guns that look different than your friends' is cool, but when I show up at a player hub, to buy, sell, trade, or hangout, I want people to see a unique helmet or body armor. I want them to say, Oh man, how'd you get that! or Wow, you killed (unique and difficult NPC)? Something that separates my skills from everyone else's. Think of mounts from WoW, or unique items from Skyrim. Something rare, special, and unique will keep me grinding those achievements.